I was working at Quarterdeck, doing tech support, QA, and beta testing. We were encouraged to dabble, experiment, and push the envelope, as well as being expected to have broad familiarity with not only the company's own products but those of others with which those products might have to interact. Linux came into the picture, IIRC, as a result of the DesqView/X product development. I still have a shrink-wrapped copy of that... wanna try it?:-)
This suggested reboot has already happened, as online fan-produced indie series:
Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II Starship Farragut Starship Exeter
That first one is by far the most technically impressive. There have been other TOS-based fan efforts, but these are the most successful of them. There are other Trek-based fan productions as well, and Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, though it's derived from later 'official' series, arguably spawned all of these efforts by proving the concept in the first place, over a span of seven years. It may be the mother of all Star Trek fan productions; it has now spawned multiple spin-offs that are all in active production.
ST:NV/P2 has garnered enough attention that some of its production team had a hand in another indie Trek Production, Of Gods And Men, whose cast and crew included some names most of you will immediately recognize. What's more, some of the original TOS writers have been drawn into this, and are drafting new original scripts.
I'm deliberately not providing links; I want you to poke around and discover just how much Trekking has been going on outside of Paramount. I'm posting this many hours later than I started it, because I wound up revisiting all the production sites to catch up. If you don't have that kind of time and just want to see the very best of what's out there, I'd suggest the ST:NV episode World Enough And Time (WEAT) and Star Trek: Of Gods And Men. They will both leave you wanting more.
Since I have SID, I already have super hearing, thanks, but most of the time I wish I *didn't* have it. It's a life-altering distraction that can't be turned-off. That might be one good thing to say for a tech alternative: it will of course have the on-off switch that I wish I had.
... but there have been numerous smart articulate people (myself inclusive) who reached all those exact same conclusions many many years ago and have been suggesting precisely the same remedy to anyone and everyone who would listen... which, as it happens, wasn't a very large crowd. I wonder if that crowd has even grown faster than the birthrate in the last 20 years? Is there enough of a groundswell of people now to finally put a stop to centuries of wealth-concentrating madness?
I said I have trouble remembering CERTAIN things. For some other things I seem to have an almost photographic memory. Since my spatial memory seems to be more reliable than other forms, GUI interfaces seem to be very helpful to me, when they are properly implemented (and not all are). In another branch here I also clarified that I'm NOT referring to purely iconic GUIs, as those quickly become non-unique and even more trouble than CLI commands. The function input wizards in some spreadsheet apps are a good "hybrid" example of a GUI alternative to what would otherwise be strictly CLI; I don't see any reason why that can't be more effectively repeated throughout an entire operating system environment and other applications. It doesn't rely on unintelligible icons and it TEACHES or reminds one of the actual commands at the same time, so that if you're ever forced to use the command line you're more likely to recall what's required because you've effectively still been seeing it all every day.
Yeah, I know what you mean; I have a backwater boonies cousin, and every time I show him a book with text in it he grabs it and starts looking for the reset button.
Icons are indeed often useless, but that is just one narrow facet of GUI implementation. GUI MENUS are more what I had in mind. More to the point of what you mentioned, how about the GUIs in most spreadsheet apps, where you have the option of using a GUI "function wizard" that allows you to pick the function you want from a list, and then lets you further select and customize the necessary parameters? That, to me, is an especially good use of a GUI.
I already know how to augment a person's senses: it's called SID (Sensory Integration Disorder). Anyone with SID is automatically the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Doesn't require any awkward paraphernalia, either, just a few rearranged genes! You probably already know one of these SID people, like the guy who screams at the neighborhood kids to stop that infernal racket!
Why exactly does the GUI exist as a visual tool, then? What is the benefit of it that makes it so compelling for so many people? Perhaps you need to put away your man pages and THINK about it.
There's another corollary benefit to GUIs beside what I mentioned above: they can tie visual memory to other symbolic memory. The two can be very separate and distinct. For instance, I will routinely forget the details of something I've read, but if I read it in a book I'll remember which opposing page contained it and even which column or paragraph it was in. In other words (no pun), I'll forget the words but remember its spatial location.
A properly implemented GUI can use visual memory and reasoning to enhance other forms of memory. It's not all-or-nothing.
How long has zsh and its autocomplete feature been around? The Windows NT CLI (cmd.exe) has had at least partial autocomplete for some time, as well as that buffered recall.
While I'm flattered that you're offering free sex to a complete stranger, I'll have to pass as my wife is not quite so free-spirited. Oh, and if you want me to "go back to mac", you'll have to play sugar-daddy and buy me one, since I've never used a Mac.
Actually, it's more complicated than merely attracting "clueless" users: what about people like me who are anything but clueless but who have incredibly poor memories for certain things? It's a well understood fact that one of the values - if not THE value - of GUIs is the dramatic reduction in memorization and rote learning required to use such a system versus a CLI. I've been-there-done-that with CLIs, but for less than constant use I'm now forced to use cheat sheets and reference books, and that's a time-wasting pain.
I first used Linux back in 1991/92 in a job capacity, so I was an early adopter. However, I have neurological issues that result in a very unreliable memory; as a result I've been obsessed my entire adult life with retaining "reference" materials. I also suspect that poor memory caused me to develop a compensatory advanced reasoning IQ: I am often able to reason things out on-the-fly when others are dependent upon memory and rote learning. Consequently I've also been obsessed with understanding how things tick, because the better I understand the system the better I can handle unexpected situations and reconstruct things I've forgotten.
This is the primary reason why a Linux distro with a GUI and menu-item equivalents for CLI commands is important. GUIs are all about reducing the rote learning requirement. Why is rote learning so tightly bound to our perception of elite-ness? I suck at rote learning, but I can reason my way out of a black box when others dependent on memory will remain stuck inside. I shouldn't be penalized for that by my operating system.
Tell that to the Samsonite Gorillas who shipped and handled my bag of tortilla chips before I got them home! If I had wanted tortilla BITS then I'd have looked for a product labelled as tortilla bits.
You know, it's usually fearful people who dispense that kind of regurgitated FUD and spin. I doubt you're any sort of mastermind with an evil plan, rather just some poor Pavlovian brainwashed minion saying the only thing he knows to say whenever his knee is whacked in a certain way. Of what exactly are you afraid, I wonder?
The scenario you insinuate isn't really socialism at all, but a perversion of it. It would be a nobler thing to actually study what you've been taught to fear, rather than repeating FUD. FUD is FUD because it's MISinformation.
Nope. I was thinking pretty generally and rhetorically when I wrote that, even though (now in a less sleep-deprived state) I see that I did use the word government at one earlier point. At least I didn't use it in the same breath with socialism, like I said I didn't.
(Ideally, socialism and government wouldn't have anything to do with each other, because people would AGREE to the socialist economy without force of government. The libertarians have that much right: using force of government is never ideal. My ideal would be a fully socialist - objectively valued - economy and a democratic government, but it's still a pipe dream. People have to want it. We don't have that kind of consensus.)
You're raucously funny... my original comment contained no mention at all of either "Obama", "administration", or even "government", much less a comparison of any of those to socialism. You've just managed to redefine the acronym TMI: Too Much Inference.
I don't know which dogmatic partisan high-horse you're riding, but would you kindly go ride it somewhere else and get it the hell out of my flower garden? Thanks much.
Slashdot Mirror
That's correct, which is why I was careful to add the qualifier "at least partial" to my mention of it.
I was working at Quarterdeck, doing tech support, QA, and beta testing. We were encouraged to dabble, experiment, and push the envelope, as well as being expected to have broad familiarity with not only the company's own products but those of others with which those products might have to interact. Linux came into the picture, IIRC, as a result of the DesqView/X product development. I still have a shrink-wrapped copy of that... wanna try it? :-)
This suggested reboot has already happened, as online fan-produced indie series:
Star Trek: New Voyages/Phase II
Starship Farragut
Starship Exeter
That first one is by far the most technically impressive. There have been other TOS-based fan efforts, but these are the most successful of them. There are other Trek-based fan productions as well, and Star Trek: Hidden Frontier, though it's derived from later 'official' series, arguably spawned all of these efforts by proving the concept in the first place, over a span of seven years. It may be the mother of all Star Trek fan productions; it has now spawned multiple spin-offs that are all in active production.
ST:NV/P2 has garnered enough attention that some of its production team had a hand in another indie Trek Production, Of Gods And Men, whose cast and crew included some names most of you will immediately recognize. What's more, some of the original TOS writers have been drawn into this, and are drafting new original scripts.
I'm deliberately not providing links; I want you to poke around and discover just how much Trekking has been going on outside of Paramount. I'm posting this many hours later than I started it, because I wound up revisiting all the production sites to catch up. If you don't have that kind of time and just want to see the very best of what's out there, I'd suggest the ST:NV episode World Enough And Time (WEAT) and Star Trek: Of Gods And Men. They will both leave you wanting more.
Enough of all this shark-jumping! Sharks have feelings, too!
Actually I'm a loan shark, but we're all brothers.
Since I have SID, I already have super hearing, thanks, but most of the time I wish I *didn't* have it. It's a life-altering distraction that can't be turned-off. That might be one good thing to say for a tech alternative: it will of course have the on-off switch that I wish I had.
... but there have been numerous smart articulate people (myself inclusive) who reached all those exact same conclusions many many years ago and have been suggesting precisely the same remedy to anyone and everyone who would listen... which, as it happens, wasn't a very large crowd. I wonder if that crowd has even grown faster than the birthrate in the last 20 years? Is there enough of a groundswell of people now to finally put a stop to centuries of wealth-concentrating madness?
I said I have trouble remembering CERTAIN things. For some other things I seem to have an almost photographic memory. Since my spatial memory seems to be more reliable than other forms, GUI interfaces seem to be very helpful to me, when they are properly implemented (and not all are). In another branch here I also clarified that I'm NOT referring to purely iconic GUIs, as those quickly become non-unique and even more trouble than CLI commands. The function input wizards in some spreadsheet apps are a good "hybrid" example of a GUI alternative to what would otherwise be strictly CLI; I don't see any reason why that can't be more effectively repeated throughout an entire operating system environment and other applications. It doesn't rely on unintelligible icons and it TEACHES or reminds one of the actual commands at the same time, so that if you're ever forced to use the command line you're more likely to recall what's required because you've effectively still been seeing it all every day.
Yeah, I know what you mean; I have a backwater boonies cousin, and every time I show him a book with text in it he grabs it and starts looking for the reset button.
You might be right, if the guy weighs 400 pounds and smells like a barnyard refugee.
Icons are indeed often useless, but that is just one narrow facet of GUI implementation. GUI MENUS are more what I had in mind. More to the point of what you mentioned, how about the GUIs in most spreadsheet apps, where you have the option of using a GUI "function wizard" that allows you to pick the function you want from a list, and then lets you further select and customize the necessary parameters? That, to me, is an especially good use of a GUI.
"So you mean that mutants with super hearing and x-ray vision are walking among us now? ZOMG! Call Nathan Petrelli and round 'em up!"
I already know how to augment a person's senses: it's called SID (Sensory Integration Disorder). Anyone with SID is automatically the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Doesn't require any awkward paraphernalia, either, just a few rearranged genes! You probably already know one of these SID people, like the guy who screams at the neighborhood kids to stop that infernal racket!
Why exactly does the GUI exist as a visual tool, then? What is the benefit of it that makes it so compelling for so many people? Perhaps you need to put away your man pages and THINK about it.
There's another corollary benefit to GUIs beside what I mentioned above: they can tie visual memory to other symbolic memory. The two can be very separate and distinct. For instance, I will routinely forget the details of something I've read, but if I read it in a book I'll remember which opposing page contained it and even which column or paragraph it was in. In other words (no pun), I'll forget the words but remember its spatial location.
A properly implemented GUI can use visual memory and reasoning to enhance other forms of memory. It's not all-or-nothing.
How long has zsh and its autocomplete feature been around? The Windows NT CLI (cmd.exe) has had at least partial autocomplete for some time, as well as that buffered recall.
While I'm flattered that you're offering free sex to a complete stranger, I'll have to pass as my wife is not quite so free-spirited. Oh, and if you want me to "go back to mac", you'll have to play sugar-daddy and buy me one, since I've never used a Mac.
Actually, it's more complicated than merely attracting "clueless" users: what about people like me who are anything but clueless but who have incredibly poor memories for certain things? It's a well understood fact that one of the values - if not THE value - of GUIs is the dramatic reduction in memorization and rote learning required to use such a system versus a CLI. I've been-there-done-that with CLIs, but for less than constant use I'm now forced to use cheat sheets and reference books, and that's a time-wasting pain.
I first used Linux back in 1991/92 in a job capacity, so I was an early adopter. However, I have neurological issues that result in a very unreliable memory; as a result I've been obsessed my entire adult life with retaining "reference" materials. I also suspect that poor memory caused me to develop a compensatory advanced reasoning IQ: I am often able to reason things out on-the-fly when others are dependent upon memory and rote learning. Consequently I've also been obsessed with understanding how things tick, because the better I understand the system the better I can handle unexpected situations and reconstruct things I've forgotten.
This is the primary reason why a Linux distro with a GUI and menu-item equivalents for CLI commands is important. GUIs are all about reducing the rote learning requirement. Why is rote learning so tightly bound to our perception of elite-ness? I suck at rote learning, but I can reason my way out of a black box when others dependent on memory will remain stuck inside. I shouldn't be penalized for that by my operating system.
Gimme my GUI!
... when it springs another gas leak and blows up.
Tell that to the Samsonite Gorillas who shipped and handled my bag of tortilla chips before I got them home! If I had wanted tortilla BITS then I'd have looked for a product labelled as tortilla bits.
Guido does sometime do that, but he works for the MAFIAA so he often just sucks out your spine wholesale.
What happens if I try to ask it when it will be available to the rest of us mere mortals? Does the web site or my head asplode?
My buddy Guido can reduce the number.
You know, it's usually fearful people who dispense that kind of regurgitated FUD and spin. I doubt you're any sort of mastermind with an evil plan, rather just some poor Pavlovian brainwashed minion saying the only thing he knows to say whenever his knee is whacked in a certain way. Of what exactly are you afraid, I wonder?
The scenario you insinuate isn't really socialism at all, but a perversion of it. It would be a nobler thing to actually study what you've been taught to fear, rather than repeating FUD. FUD is FUD because it's MISinformation.
Nope. I was thinking pretty generally and rhetorically when I wrote that, even though (now in a less sleep-deprived state) I see that I did use the word government at one earlier point. At least I didn't use it in the same breath with socialism, like I said I didn't.
(Ideally, socialism and government wouldn't have anything to do with each other, because people would AGREE to the socialist economy without force of government. The libertarians have that much right: using force of government is never ideal. My ideal would be a fully socialist - objectively valued - economy and a democratic government, but it's still a pipe dream. People have to want it. We don't have that kind of consensus.)
I was comparing the two more than a decade ago, and discussing it with friends who agreed. The parallels are, dare I suggest it, obvious.
You're raucously funny... my original comment contained no mention at all of either "Obama", "administration", or even "government", much less a comparison of any of those to socialism. You've just managed to redefine the acronym TMI: Too Much Inference.
I don't know which dogmatic partisan high-horse you're riding, but would you kindly go ride it somewhere else and get it the hell out of my flower garden? Thanks much.